ABSTRACT An ad hoc network is an assortment of wireless mobile nodes dynamically forming a transitory network lacking the use of any presented network communications or centralized management. A number of routing protocols like Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Ad Hoc on-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) and Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) have been projected. In this work an attempt has been ended to evaluate the performance of two outstanding on demand reactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks: DSR and AODV. Although DSR and AODV share comparable on-demand behavior, the differences in the protocol mechanics can lead to significant performance differentials. The performance differentials are analyzed using varying time, packet delivery ratio, throughput and end-to-end delay. These simulations are carried out using the ns-2 network simulator, which is used to run ad hoc simulations.